What are the world's most prestigious MBA programs? The truth is that there isn't a single metric that can answer that question. 

When it comes to choosing the best business school, there are numerous factors to consider. An MBA degree/education prepares you for a long-term career and short-term work. Many factors must be examined during the admission process, including GMAT and GRE scores, essays, references, interviews, and alumni status. As a result, making an informed decision during the college shortlisting step is essential. Let us see the below table to know the top 10 MBA programs by the number of applicants. 

Stanford Graduate School of Business 

No other prestigious MBA school is as selective as Stanford University's Graduate School of Business year after year. With a 6.9% acceptance rate and 17.6 applicants per classroom seat, it has the lowest acceptance rate. No other business school comes close to matching those figures. And when Stanford extends an offer of admission to an applicant, 83% accept it.

Harvard Business School 

HBS is a prestigious business school in the United States. HBS loses a few dual admits to Stanford every year, but no school has a better track record of getting admitted students to matriculate than Harvard Business School. The school's 89% yield rate is the envy of the business school world, down two percentage points in the last year. The most recent incoming cohort's average GMAT score was 728.

MIT Sloan School of Management 

With a 14.6% acceptance rate, MIT Sloan is the next best school in terms of admit rate. Sloan receives more applications per available seat than Harvard: 12.5 for each position in a cohort of only 416 students, which is about the same size as Stanford's entering MBA class.

Columbia Business School 

The school has two admissions, one in August and one in January. In the fall of the second year, the two cohorts, each of which has four terms, combine to complete electives as a single class. It's far easier to get into the January intake, which gets around a third of the graduating class. The acceptance rate for the August cohort is only 16.4%, with a yield of 66%. For that intake, CBS receives the same number of candidates as HBS.

UC-Berkeley Haas School of Business

Only 17.7% of applications were accepted, making Haas one of only five renowned MBA programs globally that accept fewer than one out of every five applicants. As a result, Haas is tied with MIT for the second-highest number of candidates per available classroom seat, at 12.5. The average GMAT score in the class is 725, with local students scoring slightly lower at 721 and overseas students scoring somewhat higher at 730.

Fuqua School of Business, Duke University 

With a 22.9% admission rate, Fuqua's MBA program is more selective than Wharton or Chicago Booth, with somewhat more applicants per classroom seat than those two schools that are consistently ranked at the top of MBA rankings. And the average GMAT score in the class was 705.

University of Pennsylvania Wharton School 

Applicants for the autumn 2019 intake at the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School decreased by 5.4% from 2018 by 11.8% from the school's all-time high of 6,692 in 2017. Indeed, last year was the first time in at least eight years that Wharton's application numbers fell below 6,000, and it coincided with the lowest international student intake of 30%. The average GMAT score in the class was 732, just two points lower than Stanford's. The GMAT scores of enrolled students ranged from 540 to 790; however, Wharton had enrolled a student with a 500 GMAT score a year before.

University of Chicago Booth School of Business

The average class GMAT score for the most recent incoming cohort at Chicago Booth was 730, just two points lower than Wharton, with domestic students averaging 729 and overseas students averaging 731. The lowest score received was 610, while the maximum score received was 790. It now accepts GRE scores, but it is perhaps the only top U.S. institution favouring the GMAT over the GRE. A GRE average verbal score of 163.3 and a quant score of 164.1 was used by 13% of the most recent cohort.

Yale School of Management

With a 25.2% admission rate, the school is obviously in the top 10. The Class of 2021 had an average GMAT score of 721, with domestic students scoring 719 and overseas students scoring 725. 3.64 was the average undergraduate GPA. Yale only publishes GMAT scores in the middle 80 percentile, ranging from 680 to 760. 

New York University Stern School of Business

The Stern School of Business at New York University rounds out the top 10 in terms of selectiveness, admitting 26.1% of applicants to its full-time, two-year MBA program. The average GMAT in the class was 721, with the lowest GMAT being 600 and the best being 780. The average undergraduate GPA was 3.52, with a range of 2.84 to 3.99.

Also read: What does your college degree means to graduate schools?